


Amphitryon's Response (A Two-Way Telepathic Remix)

by Muccamukk



Category: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
Genre: AU after that, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Heavy Angst, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Season/Series 01, Sexual Abuse, Telepathy, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 03:19:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13778547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Steve wakes up after his abduction by Skrull!Steve, and quickly realises that he can see through his captor's eyes. He is disturbed when he sees his doppelgänger seduce his best friend, and when the relationship takes a dark turn, the real Steve must fight to escape, and to save his team and his sanity.





	Amphitryon's Response (A Two-Way Telepathic Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Alcmene Analogue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/423156) by [Ironlawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Ironlawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer) in the [Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018) collection. 



> Warnings: There is semi-graphic non-con and abusive sex, as well as emotional abuse (between the Skrull and Tony). There is also self-loathing, ideation of self harm and suicide, and starvation (Steve). There is not a clear happy get together ending.
> 
> The story ignores the events of EMH season two.
> 
> Thank you to Kiyaar for beta reading.

Steve wakes up in a cell not quite wide enough to let him stretch out on the unpadded steel bench. There's a panel light in the ceiling, a sink, a toilet, and a steel door with no window.

Pain pounds through his head and neck, both the general ache of the stunner, and a specific stab right through his temples. When he pulls his gloves off and feels his forehead, his fingers find a crudely stitched incision on each side. They—whoever they are, whoever sent his doppelgänger to knock him out—have done something to his head. He presses at the wounds. Have they injected something? Implanted it? Steve can't tell.

He tries banging on the door (no reply), leaping at the ceiling to rip out the lights (it's behind unbreakable glass), screaming in anger (satisfying but ineffective). Steve sits down on the bench, leans against the wall, and stares at the door.

He still doesn't know what grabbed him. Some kind of shape shifter maybe, or a robot. Whatever it was stunned him and took his place, but surely his team will spot it quickly. Tony especially knows him far too well to be fooled by an imposter. No, they'll figure it out and rescue him in no time. It's just too bad that he can't work out how to meet them half way. Well, there's time yet.

Steve falls asleep a couple hours later, still leaning against the side of the cell.

When he wakes, his thoughts are full of memories of his dreams, stunning in both their vividness and mundanity. He's at the Mansion. He goes for a jog, then attends an Avengers meeting, where they debrief on the mission to Asgard. He fills out mission logs. He spars with T'Challa. It's all just a normal post-mission day, if a little tinged with an unsettled feeling, inexplicable anxiety. A wave of nostalgia and loneliness washes over Steve. If he hadn’t been kidnapped, he'd be in the Mansion right now, doing exactly those things. It's like he's seeing an alternate version of himself, one who hasn't been kidnapped.

Understanding replaces longing with a sickening crash. Steve puts his hand over his mouth and has to breath hard to keep from throwing up. He hasn't seen what he would be doing, and he wasn't dreaming. The visions he's having are of what his doppelgänger is doing. It must be accessing his mind so that it doesn't slip up. He presses his fingers to the healing scars on his temples, again trying to feel if any device was implanted, and again can't detect anything under the skin.

They're in Steve's mind; he knows that now, and while they must be using the connection to draw information from him. He can use that. He can find out what they want, and maybe how to get out of here in time to keep them from getting it.

If only they don't use him to get what they want first.

 _Come on, Tony_ , he thinks, _it's not me. You've got to figure that out!_

* * *

The next day is the same. As far as he can tell, it's a day, anyway. The light never dims or alters, and food is shoved through a slot in the door at seemingly random intervals on a tray that disintegrates after Steve eats the grey protein sludge it contains. Steve always eats without hesitation. If they were going to poison him, they've had plenty of chances.

He sleeps again, and dreams of a day like any other. The other him goes to a children's hospital, trains with Jan and Hank, answers fan mail, and does nothing suspicious whatsoever. Steve hates his doppelgänger with an intensity he hasn't known since 1945.

The third day is different. Steve wakes soaked through with perspiration and breathing hard. It was like a nightmare, and yet it's the sweetest thing he's ever known. Steve swears and presses his face into his hands and makes himself remember.

He's sparring with Tony, just like a hundred other times, until the other him rolls them over and starts kissing, right there on the mats. The kissing had turns into sex with remarkable speed, Tony making pleased and pleading noises and digging his fingers into Steve's shoulders. The dreams didn't carry sensation with them, but they got strong emotion across just fine. Steve fells his doppelgänger's satisfaction, his smug vindication, and something like relief all together in a tangled bundle. The emotions don't seem to have anything to do with the gorgeous man lying spread out on the training room floor, grinning and laughing and unable to keep himself from touching Steve's arm.

Tony clearly wants it, just as clearly loves it when it gets it, and Steve... Steve has no idea what to feel about that. He does know what he feels about this creature stealing Steve's form in order to sleep with Tony under false pretences.

When he's done screaming and throwing himself against the door, Steve slumps down on the floor under the sink. Maybe if he ripped it off and started to flood out the cell? He figures it was worth a try.

He wakes up in a cell that's a mirror image of his original one with only hazy memories of what had happened. His head hurts, and he thinks they might have gassed him. He doesn't remember any more visions.

Steve curls in on himself and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes so he won't weep. That thing is using him to hurt Tony. Has it picked up on Steve's hopes that Tony would be the one to find him out? Is that why it’s seducing Tony? To distract him, and protect its cover? That would make this Steve's fault, and he doesn't know if he could survive that. Or is it just that it can tell that Tony is interested in Steve, and is opportunistically satisfying itself? He can't read enough of its feelings to tell its motives.

How does it know that Tony was interested in Steve? Steve sure hadn't ever noticed. Tony has always been kind to him, under all the sarcasm, but to just roll over and start kissing him? That comes with strong, pre-existing feelings. What would Steve have done if Tony had kissed him like that? What does he feel now?

Steve presses until his eyes hurt and he feels like throwing up again. He can't waste time on this. He has to work on what the creature wants and how he can stop it. There is no time to worry about what he does or does not feel about Tony Stark.

Breaking the cell hasn't worked, but what else can he try?

* * *

Some time passes in happy, hazy dreams of sex and working with his team. Every morning, Steve wakes up and tries not to think about what his doppelgänger and Tony did in bed the night before, and sometimes in the morning, and on the odd occasion in the middle of the afternoon. He doesn't want to know the expression on Tony's face when the thing bends his legs back and presses its cock into him, or the way he looks up at what he thinks is Steve with an expression that Steve can only describe as adoration. He doesn't want to know the different faces Tony makes when he comes, or when he's begging for a kiss, or when he wakes up thinking he's lying next to someone he loves. He seems to fall a little more every day for what he thinks is Steve, and every day he makes it easier for the creature to cut him to the heart.

And Steve is... Steve is trying not to think about what this means, even though he has nothing to do but think. He does push ups until he's too tired to breathe some days, but the images of Tony arching back under him, the transmitted feelings of satisfaction—they never leave Steve's mind. He could have had that if he'd wanted it, could have had it years ago, Tony told his doppelgänger. He doesn't let himself think about that either. He'd never wanted a man before, and while he's certainly noticed that Tony was attractive, he'd never really considered him in a romantic light, nor anyone else on the team, not really. He was busy fighting and trying to find his place in this new world, and before that was the war, and honestly Steve is not a man given to introspection.

However long he's been here is probably the longest he's spent inactive since 1940.

He is going to have to figure out what to do about Tony when he gets out, but now isn't the time to do it. He isn't sure he's ever going to be prepared. The whole conversation is unimaginable. He is party to his best friend's assault, and there is nothing he can do to stop it.

Steve considers smashing his head against the wall hard enough to destroy whatever they'd implanted in him, or failing that hard enough that they'll never be able to pull anything from his brain again, but the time for that has passed. He should have done it when he woke up, before the creature had pulled enough knowledge from his mind to pass itself off as Steve Rogers and Captain America. If he knew then what the creature was going to do... Well, that doesn't matter now. He didn't act, and it's too late. His best hope is to work out how to escape and hope that thing hasn't broken Tony too badly.

Lord, Tony is never going to be able to look him in the eye again. That's fine, Steve won't be able to either, maybe if he...

Steve groans. This is why he'd been trying not to think about this. He drops to the cell floor and starts doing push ups.

* * *

The next day he stops eating. First, technically speaking, he throws up everything he's eaten, and then he refuses food when it slides in on it's little decomposable tray.

When he sleeps he sees himself hurting Tony. Steve isn't naive. He knows about the kinds of sex people have that involves pain by mutual consent, but he also knows this isn't that. This is his doppelgänger bullying Tony into doing something he doesn't want, and then taking pleasure from him with no consideration of Tony's feelings. The hundred images of Tony's face caught in a moment of ecstasy are replaced with the one of Tony's eye's squeezed shut, lips pressed together as he forces himself not to cry. And Steve's double doesn't make sure Tony comes, doesn't even held him after. It just rolls over and sleeps itself.

Steve considers doing himself serious harm to force his captors to transfer him to their infirmary, but he wants to be in fighting shape, and he doesn't know if they'd just drug him, fix him, and toss him back in. A hunger strike seems painfully slow, but he can't work out a better option.

He flushes the protein sludge down the toilet and watches the cup dissolve into dust. Then he starts doing push ups to burn energy faster.

* * *

Sarah Rogers raised her son to be a good Catholic. Steve was an altar boy, briefly, as a child, and went to mass at least twice a week. Father Thomas was a good man, and understood that the people of his parish needed comfort more than fear, but Steve still came out of his childhood with a meticulous understanding of damnation.

Now, if Steve could trade the fires that Father Thomas described for what he's facing in this tiny cell, he would do it in a heartbeat. He'd do it even knowing it was his immortal soul on the line, if only he could spare Tony from the thing wearing Steve's face.

It keeps hurting Tony, and the worst of it—worse than how Steve can feel its feral satisfaction at Tony's pain—is how Tony keeps thinking it's his fault. He'll look at the doppelgänger, and Steve can tell that Tony's feeling guilty, wondering what he's done wrong, what he should be doing, instead of understanding that this monster isn't Steve, that Steve could never do these things to him.

Steve goes to sleep, when he can sleep, praying for Tony to realise the truth, or even just to realise that he doesn't deserve to be treated like this, and to punch Steve in the face. Steve figures he has it coming no matter what.

He's hungry all the time now, but the thirst is worse. That's good. He deserves to feel like this for letting this happen to Tony. He's been working hard, and he can feel his body starting to slow down. He'll play it up a bit when he can.

His days—as far as he can keep track of them—fall into a haze of hunger, thirst, and visions of his best friend in pain. One night he ties up Tony, gags him, and fucks him raw. Another day, he tells Tony he's useless, a drag on the team. Tony starts to flinch a little when he sees the doppelgänger, but he doesn't seem to realise he's doing it until the doppelgänger snaps at him about it. He looks hunted.

Steve stops praying that Tony will tune in, and starts hoping that Jan or T'Challa will murder Steve's double in his bed. From the looks their giving him, they're starting to think about it. Good. Someone needs to save Tony, and it's clearly not going to be either Steve or Tony himself. One's trapped, and the other can't seem to see the flames to step out of them.

That part is Steve's fault. He's done something, somehow, to bind Tony to him, and to make Tony think he's the kind of person who would treat a lover in ways that Steve himself would never treat his worst enemy (though, if he had a choice of trapping this imposter in a hell of its own making, he'd seriously consider it). It's Steve's fault for not breaking out of here sooner, for just sitting here and watching the thing that's taken his shape slowly grind Tony down into dust. It's Steve's fault for getting caught in the first place.

He knows that even if he breaks out, his place with the Avengers is gone. He'll never be able to look at Tony and not see the monster with his face hurting him. He'll never be able to work with Tony knowing that Tony would let Steve hurt him like that with hardly a word of complaint. He'll never be able to face a team that stood by and watched one of its members destroy another. The only thing he can do is break free and see if he can free what's left of Tony, too.

After that, well, Steve isn't really sure it matters.

He passes out from hunger, and drifts in and out of a vision of himself holding Tony down and fucking him bloody.

* * *

Hands drag Steve out of the cell, tossing him onto a cart like a gunny sack; then he's wheeling down the hall. He lies limp, even when they prod him sharply. He pools his energy. Waits.

The cart draws him into a space with more echoes. Steve waits until he hears the attendants step away. He's so out of it that the image of Tony's face is overlaying his sight, and he doesn't know if it's a transmission from his doppelgänger or a memory. Tony looks worn out, angry at himself, in pain. Steve takes the knowledge that this is his fault, balls it up into strength and flies off the cart.

His captors are some kind of green-skinned aliens, and he's finally managed to take them by surprise. The fight's a blur. Steve's body is moving on anger and instinct, and he's letting it. When they're down, he grabs the nutrient packs they were about to force feed him and runs. He hits a long corridor he thinks is the opposite of the way he's come, and freezes.

There's a porthole, and behind that stars. His already erratic heartbeat stutters for a second at the thought that they're in deep space, and he has no way home. He takes a deep breath and pauses to down the nutrients. Then he turns and runs across ship to look for something better. It's lightly staffed, and he only knocks out one startled officer along the way. At the far side, he finds another porthole, and this one has a blessed blue slice of the Earth in its view. They're in a low orbit. That Steve can deal with.

He steals a landing shuttle and leaves their ship in flames behind him. He'll worry about it later, once he has his team. 

The system autopilots him to the garbage dump in Staten Island. He can here rotor blades, so he pops the hatch and flags down the SHIELD helicopter that's hovering anxiously over his alien landing craft. It's a matter of minutes, and he's standing outside of the Mansion. The cool night air cuts through the rips in his costume.

He has to move fast. He doesn't know how much fight he has left in him, and he has to convince Tony that he's been... oh God.

Steve pushes forward into the Mansion, asks Jarvis where Tony is. He'll find him, get rid of the imposter, and deal with everything else later. Everything's too familiar. He even knows the changes, because he's been seeing them through his doppelgänger's eyes. 

Tony's in his lab, and for a moment he doesn't see Steve. His shoulders are bunched up, and he's preparing for a beating. Then he turns, sees Steve—his gaunt, bearded face, his torn uniform—and is all concern and questions.

It's hard to explain what's happened. That he's been gone, and Tony has been with a monster. Steve decides that getting into having seen what was done to Tony will make it worse. "He's an alien, Tony—an alien. He’s not me," he says, but before he can find a way to put it better, the same alien jumps him.

Turns out Steve did have enough fight in him to take out one more obstacle. By the time Tony's got his armour on, Steve has the creature knocked out and in a headlock for good measure. Of course that doesn't help his case, as all Tony see is an ragged imposter holding down his boyfriend. Tony aims his repulsor, and Steve can't see his face, but from his posture he means business.

"Tony, wait!" he pleads. He hadn't thought about it being this hard. He does now. "You have to listen to me, Tony."

Tony isn't interested. "I don’t have to do anything. Let Cap go."

Steve tries to say that he is Cap, that being replaced by an alien isn't even that weird for them. Something in that gets through enough to convince Tony to run a DNA test. Steve holds onto the imposter, and waits for the results. Tony denies the truth, denies it three times. He's taken his helmet off by now, so Steve gets to watch his expression as the denial starts to creep into realisation.

"He’s been impersonating me since we returned from the fight with Loki," Steve says.

Tony freezes for one long, terrifying moment, and then he crumples. The armour falls away with a clang, and Tony's on his knees retching hard. It's the worst thing Steve has ever seen. Tony's whole world has ended.

"We'll get through this," he tries to say, but Tony doesn't hear him. Steve puts down the imposter and moves towards Tony, but that just makes it worse. Even though Steve is holding his hands out wide and open, and speaking softly, Tony shoots him a look of absolute terror, and then passes out.

"Jarvis!" Steve calls, and gets a medical scan. Tony's physically fine. He's just had too much. Steve rolls him out of the vomit and puts a blanket over him. He knows he has no right to be touching Tony, but he wipes his face clean and keeps a hand on his hair for a while. This is real. He can tell the difference between kneeling here on the floor, smelling machine oil and sick, and feeling the cool perspiration on Tony's neck, and the vivid unreality of the transmitted visions.

He makes himself get up, then ties up the imposter. The rest of the team is coming already, and Steve is going to have to work out what to tell them.

It can't be the truth. Hank or T'Challa will have to take out the implants, but Steve can't tell them that it's a two-way transmission. They can't know that he's been seeing Tony humiliated night after night and feeling the creature's pleasure as it happens. He's never before admitted to being a coward, even to himself, but he knows he is one now.

"It will be better for Tony," he says aloud, but he doesn't know if that's true or not. He does know that Tony's intense privacy has already been shattered and then ground into the dust, and that knowing that Steve saw every detail will not help. He doesn't know if being able to share what happened to him will make it worse or not.

He'll plead ignorance for now, and see how the ground lies.

T'Challa comes in first with Jan hard behind him. Steve holds his hands up, and lets Jarvis explain.

* * *

Tony's afraid of him. Steve doesn't blame him, could never blame him for anything, but it still cuts to the bone every time he sees Tony's back as he comes into a room. His mind replays the images of Tony writhing under the doppelgänger's body, first in pleasure, then in pain. He knows that Tony must be doing the same when he sees Steve, and Steve mostly tries to keep clear of him.

The others hover in a cloud of ineffectual concern. Steve avoids them too. He should just leave the team, possibly the country, the planet if he could manage it. But what if Tony needs him? He can't let Tony think he's abandoning him now.

He stops Tony to try to tell him this, and Tony runs again, hides in the lab for two days. Steve tries again, tries to talk about what he feels, to show Tony that maybe he understands a tiny bit. Tony has a panic attack.

Steve avoids him entirely after that. It's a big mansion, and he's not spending any time in it anyway. He starts taking solo missions and jobs with SHIELD.

* * *

"So Tony's seeing a psychiatrist," Jan tells him when he drifts in to change a few days later.

Steve nods. "Good. That's good. I hope it helps."

They're sitting in the kitchen, and Jan's got her concerned face on. She's been wearing it a lot lately. Now she lays her small hand over his. (Hands like the ones that had squeezed Tony's together until the bones ground and Tony buried is face in the pillows to muffle his scream.) "Have you considered it?"

"What?" Steve tries to think what they've been talking about. His concentration's been shot, and he isn't sleeping. "I thought you didn't want me to leave to team."

Jan sighs. That wasn't it then. "Have you considered seeing a psychiatrist too?"

"Oh," Steve says. If he talks to a doctor, he'll have to admit what he saw. He'll have to admit that every time he closes his eyes, he sees the world through alien eyes, that every time he dreams he repeats those visions of Tony under him, in pain, and feels glad, that sometimes he wakes up from them with an erection. "No, I'm fine. It's Tony I'm worried about. I'm glad he's getting help."

"I'm worried about you, too."

Steve shakes his head. "I'm fine," he says again.

Jan doesn't say anything, but her expression answers for her.

* * *

Tony asks if Steve can sit in on a session with Samson. Steve wishes that the Avengers had to battle Loki's rule over Asgard again instead. He wishes he was in in that chambers of horrors Odin had made for his traitor son.

"Of course," he tells Samson. "Whatever I can do to help."

"I'd like you to come in an hour early," Sampson tells him.

Steve's hand tightens on the phone. He has to be careful not to break these fragile technological wonders, especially since he's come home. "Why?"

"It will help Tony," Samson says, which they both know is a snake's move, and that Steve can't say no.

He shows up five minutes before his appointment. Samson won't say a word about how Tony is doing, but tells Steve the most important thing is to listen to him without judgement, no matter what he says.

Steve nods. As if he could judge Tony for any of this.

"You can handle this?" Samson asks.

"Yes." Steve's sitting in a chair that's at odd angles to the couch Tony will sit on. He realises he's white knuckling the arms when the fabric starts to rip under his nails. He makes himself fold his hands in his lap.

"How have you been sleeping?" Samson's tone is friendly, like Jan's. Steve knows this trick. He's trying to pretend he's not worming into Steve's head.

"Fine," Steve says.

"No nightmares of your captivity?"

Steve reminds himself that Samson doesn't know that he could see through his doppelgänger's eyes. No one knows. No one will ever know. To Samson, he's been abducted and replaced, and his best friend is afraid of him, but that's all. "Nothing I can't handle," he says.

He can tell from Samson's expression that this isn't believable, but that's fine. Samson doesn't have to believe him, he just has to help Tony. "You know my number, if they get out of hand," Samson finally tells him. Then it's time for Tony to come in.

Tony apologises to Steve. It's the worst thing Steve has ever heard. "I know you’re from the forties, so you probably think it’s sick and disgusting and maybe you’ll never want to speak to me again, but I can’t pretend… I can’t pretend I don’t feel that way about you."

He's so close to crying that Steve can't help touching him. He puts a hand on Tony's shoulder and wishes he could hug Tony and promise him that he'll never let anyone hurt him again. Steve tries to tell him that Tony could never disgust him, that he'll always be his friend, but his touch sends Tony into a blind panic, and Samson has to shoo Steve out of his office.

Steve goes home and does push ups until he sleeps. It worked in his cell, it'll work here.

He dreams of Tony smiling at him. He hasn't seen Tony smile since before Loki, but in the dream he's happy. He reaches out for Steve, and Steve takes him into the embrace that he's wanted to offer since the day he got back.

"I love you," Tony says, and kisses him. Steve's whole body warms and he kisses Tony back, running his hands through his hair, listening to him moan in pleasure. They're naked somehow, and their bodies rub against each other. Steve's blood sings though him joyously, and he knows that Tony is his. His forever. He can claim him now. He's kissing Tony harder, and Tony's expression is changing. Steve doesn't care. Tony is his to do what he likes with. He can—

The alarm wakes Steve, but he's already breathing hard. Adrenaline shocks him wide awake. He knows how that dream would have ended: Tony bloody and broken under him, his own feeling of satisfaction. His body arches like he hasn't slept, even though it's six in the morning, and he's had a good five hours, all he ever really needs.

"Jarvis," he says to the air, "is Tony Stark in the kitchen or the gym?"

"Mr. Stark is not in either specified location," Jarvis replies. That's been their compromise: Jarvis won't tell Steve where Tony is, but he will tell him up to three places he is not. It makes it easier.

Steve sighs in relief, then frowns at his own reaction. It's easy to avoid him these days, when they're both hiding. Steve will just sneak down to the gym and then...

And then what? Work himself into exhaustion, avoid his team, sleep, dream of hurting the man who he'd once thought of as his best friend, who he now thought he could have loved, if the galaxy hadn't screwed them both over? Do that all, and then do it again the next day, and the next?

He doesn't know what else to do besides leave the team. He changes his mind about the gym, and puts on his Cap uniform. He'll go see if SHIELD has anything for him this week.

He physically runs into Tony in the Mansion's foyer. For a nanosecond, they're chest to chest, both looking stunned. There's a mutual scramble back—Steve not saying anything because everything he says makes it worse, and Tony stammering a stream of, "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry."

Steve wants to catch his wrist and tell him he has nothing to be sorry for, that he's the one that's sorry, that this is his fault on a level that Tony can't even imagine, but again cowardice takes over. Mostly. "Tony," he says, "I don't blame you for any of it. I really don't. You didn't do anything wrong."

Tony's shaking his head, unconvinced. "You told me you were angry at me, for thinking that..."

He knows he's supposed to hear Tony out, but he can't this time. "I'm not. I swear I'm not. I'm mad at the Skrull for what it did to us. Everything else is my fault."

That stops Tony in his tracks. He stares at Steve like he's trying to tell if he's an imposter again. Steve holds his breath, waits. Tony shakes his head sharply and turns away. "Yeah, no," he says as he vanishes into the elevator that leads to his lab. He'll be in there for days now, like he is every time he runs into Steve.

Steve sighs. He's screwed that one up, too. He thinks of Jan's concerned smile, of the way the whole team has been circling him like he's a wounded hawk. He just flinched away from Tony the same as Tony's been flinching away from him. They have each other conditioned by now.

Instead of walking into the street, Steve goes back to his room and changes into a suit and tie. He calls Samson's number. "I think I'm not handling it," he says. "I don't think I ever was."

"I agree," Samson tells him. "Can you come in today?"

"Yes," Steve says. "I can do that."


End file.
